Gunman At DC Pizza Parlor Was 'Investigating' Right-Wing Conspiracy 'Pizzagate' Lie

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(12-05-2016, 03:36 PM)Benton Wrote: What's scarier than an armed guy in the wrong place firing shots because he believed intentionally misleading fiction?

The fact that some people still think there's nothing wrong with intentionally misleading fiction cast as news.

Of course, this isn't anything new. Not even by presidents. But it is discouraging how blatant and accepted it's become.

Intentionally misleading fiction cast as news is wrong. Agreed 100%.

That said, once you start passing laws and such deciding what can and can't be printed, it starts becoming a slippery slope.

Kind of like flag burners. Probably one of the worst kinds of protesters out there and I can't agree with it at all. That said, I will never do anything about it because it is legally protected through their free speech. Same with Colin Kapernick kneeling during the national anthem. I think he's an idiot (who's never registered in his life to vote), but it's his right to be an idiot.

So while I would be all on board for finding some way to reduce/get rid of fake news, I am not sure how you could go about doing it in a manner that doesn't risk future government censorship of media. Remember that while 99% of conspiracy theories are totally bullshit, there's always those random ones that oddly/terrifyingly enough turn out to be true.

-The Manhattan Project was a conspiracy theory at first. It would have been easy to call that fake news then.
-The CIA never did mind control experiments... until a FoIA request pulled up MK-Ultra.
etc

Just focus on teaching children critical thinking skills and logic ability while they are in school and hopefully they will have the capacity to differentiate the two.